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# London Grip New Poetry – Autumn 2012

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The Autumn 2012 issue of London Grip New Poetry features poems by:

*Charles Lauder Jr *Jane Kirwan *Mike Barlow *Rehan Qayoom *Matthew Stewart
*Thomas Roberts *Pippa Little *David R Morgan *Murray Bodo *James Norcliffe
*Janet Simon *Peter Branson *Wendy French
*Robert Nisbet *Elizabeth Smither *Teoti Jardine *Amado Storni *Angela Kirby

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG new poetry Autumn 2012

Editorial

Properly speaking, the cover image for this issue relates to Pippa Little’s poem Buster Keaton Risks His Life Again. But it might also represent my own feelings a year or so ago when (thanks to Patricia Morris) the duties of a poetry editor were about to descend on me. Happily I have survived …

… and can reflect on “my” first postings of London Grip New Poetry. What, for instance, have I learned about my own poetic preferences while reading some fine and varied submissions? Is there now an LG house-style?

What can be expected of a poem randomly selected from London Grip in 2011/12 (apart from the roughly 10% likelihood it was written by a poet from New Zealand)? We may take it for granted that any sample poem will be well-crafted, and display energy, rhythm and inventiveness in its language; but aside from this there is perhaps a 50-50 chance it will have a narrative element and/or some degree of structure – even if this only means a fairly regular stanza pattern. It’s also highly probable that the poet will be “present” – maybe not as the centre of attention, but as a flesh-and-blood observer expressing compassion, understanding or possibly anger. That being said, however, a typical London Grip poem is more likely to be understated than overwrought; and if it shocks it will be as a sharp-edged word-knife between the ribs and not as a stream of outrage over the reader’s head.

Readers may now care to amuse themselves looking for exceptions to these rough guidelines gleaned from a not-very-scientific analysis. But maybe it will be better just to set out to enjoy the poems…

Please send submissions for the next issue (December 2012) to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and including a brief, 2-3 line, biography. Previous issues of London Grip New Poetry can still be found on the London Grip site, under the category ‘poetry-archve’.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

Back to poet list… Forward to first poem

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    Charles Lauder Jr : Night Bus

    Night buses gather in Trafalgar like drunks
    red-faced   bleary-eyed   prop up lamp-posts
    swap stories   then with a sigh and a slash
    heave away   all the aches and pains of a teeter
    around the corner   as if on the verge
    of falling over   pass among barflies and film buffs
    fresh from marathons   concert-goers adrift
                                                                        like hashish smoke.
    Pockmarked tarmac shakes the skull
    a blind stumble where neon fears to tread
    the underpass   streets of brick wall and barbed wire
    guided through by quiet steady humming
    that blocks out the shouting   knife fights
    to the next oasis of light where a few gather
    asleep on their feet from waiting tables
                                                                      walking the wards.
    Conversations thick in the throat are slippery
    in the ear. There are songs of wild mountain thyme
    a tussle on the steps   on the next corner someone
    is waving   wanting directions to Victoria
    tags along to Leyton talking nonstop about the girl
    he met the week before. Last stop: the chippie
    				            if it’s still open
    then stretched out against a back lane curb
                                                                                head empty and dark.

Charles Lauder Jr is an American poet currently living in Leicestershire. His poetry has been published in British, Irish, and American journals, including Stand, Agenda, Orbis, Envoi, The SHOp, California Quarterly, and Texas Observer. His pamphlet, Bleeds, was published earlier this year by Crystal Clear Creators.

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    Jane Kirwan : Tram Number 20

    She’s lost to the world, blanking out turrets, domes,
    misses the tap on her shoulder.
    The tram’s full. Trees below the castle
    – leaves of buttercup and crimson –
    pretend it's autumn, though nearly the end of the year.
    A sharper tap on her shoulder.
    He’s large, rough – a man you’d look away from –
    scruffy, even for Prague.
    The face of someone settled outdoors,
    busking at a fairground, palming coins for a Ghost Train,
    or in a black cape scything the top field.
    He has no appeal; a question of luck
    or pay-up. She stays looking away, doesn’t check his ID.
    She knows who he is. He takes her ticket, squints,
    nods at the time shrugs.
    So it will come, out of the blue and seedy. No view.

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    Jane Kirwan : Taking Care

    The music’s too loud
    a CD of Brahms          that he claims will stir her
                                         he knows he can’t

    has put bulbs she needed to plant in a bowl
    on the bedside table

                                         he forgets what they are
    – gold, the shape of his nail as he strokes
    their velvet protection –

    he should stop sitting there
    so idle              move them out of the light

    buds break through
    where they ought not

                                         fat ones slit
    their papery cases
    tense skin striped with purple       stained
    with yellow crusts

                                        he presses replay
    moistens her lips
    picks scabs from the edges of her mouth
    gently

Jane Kirwan has had two poetry collections, Stealing The Eiffel Tower, 1997 and The Man Who Sold Mirrors, 2003 and a prose-poetry collaboration, Second Exile, with Ales Machacek, 2011, published by Rockingham Press. She is working with Wendy French on a poetry/anecdote/fact collection in response to the threats to the NHS.

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    Mike Barlow : Black Sauce

    The phone rings while I’m on with the sauce,
    the crucial moment – how much mustard?
    I’m at it again, attributing malice
    to the inanimate (the gate that shuts hard
    on my hand, the beam that’ll drop
    two centimetres as I duck). Each curse
    spits and boils in its black soup.

    But it could be good news or a friend
    so I swallow my cook’s bile and lift
    the receiver in an oil-smeared hand
    to hear your distress, the involuntary sniff
    of a body in its habit of pain, a mind
    aware of losing itself and wanting to tell
    what it knows before its gone.

    White sauce, black soup, what the hell.
    I crook the phone and carry on, grate
    a gouge in my thumb, cry over the onion,
    throw in enough chilli from the jar
    to juggle all five vowels on the palate.
    My appetite’s lost and my throat
    makes dough with the words I’m looking for.

Mike Barlow won the National Poetry Competition in 2006. His third collection, Charmed Lives, is published by Smith/Doorstop.

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    Rehan Qayoom : Post-dinner Item

    After Parveen Shakir

    Already we were among the prisoners of your locks
    But today we want to kiss your hands as well
    For today you have adorned the dinner-table
    With such a delightful variety of delicacies
    That we are all perplexed
    About where to start
    It's amazing that in spite of being occupied
    By your so-demanding social duties
    You remained kitchen-bound for so long
    Surrounded by foolish cooks and unruly servants
    All this much!
    And such appetising food
    Seems a miracle to us
    On top of which is the astounding fact
    That you must be so tired
    Yet you're so jocund
    Lady so-and-so's feast was nothing in comparison with this

    Thanks
    Thank You so much for all this gratitude
    Now, what shall I present to you
    Tea, coffee or the poet?

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    Rehan Qayoom : To a Friend

    After Parveen Shakir

    Girl! These moments are clouds
    You let them pass and they're gone
    Soak up their moist touch
    Don't waste a single drop
    Drench yourself for as long as
    Your inner earth remains thirsty
    Listen to me, learn from me
    Downpours don't remember their way back
    The summer brightness you go out to dry your hair in
    Cannot read the road signs!

Rehan Qayoom is a poet and author of English and Urdu. He has appeared in numerous magazines, and anthologies and performed his work across the world. He lives in London surrounded by books

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     Matthew Stewart : The Club Player

    “Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,

    Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun…”

    Always the latest cars out front,
    dabbed-at sweat and slopped-on perfume,
    token handshakes over the net
    by the spotless pre-war clubhouse
    with its wall-to-wall honour boards
    and lists of double-barrelled names.

    Nobody puts a face to them.
    The floodlights cool and midges swarm,
    time to stand his last round of drinks.
    He moved here for the short commute
    and he’s leaving for 5K more.
    A doppelganger town awaits.

Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade and lives between Extremadura, Spain, and West Sussex, England. Happenstance Press published his pamphlet collection, Inventing Truth, in April 2011, and he blogs at http://roguestrands.blogspot.com

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    Thomas Roberts : Cycle Race

    We leaned into its apex as the curve
    propelled us and we braced
    to accelerate.  A blur of bay

    windows reached out to touch hedges’
    leafless bristles of brush.
    We flowed.  Words performed

    somersaults as clips of the crowd’s cheers
    missed our ears, to pass
    in the slipstream.  I glanced

    behind and right: like popcorn
    on heat a kaleidoscope of vests
    bobbed on their pedals. I just

    didn’t see his veering arc closening;
    my muscles pump-primed from the sprint,
    putty.

    I just didn’t see him, to decelerate.

Thomas Roberts is a poet and songwriter based in London where he also works as a lawyer. He is originally from County Antrim in Northern Ireland.

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    Pippa Little : Buster Keaton Risks His Life Again

    This is your house
    wafer-thin,
    all-American,
    nondescript –
    anyone could live here,

    anyone whose life drags on, fathered
    by scars,
    a grown man who never smiles

    I could have been happy here

    I could have been unmarked

    I could have been grateful.

    You do not rehearse: your life
    less to you than the next cigarette.
    Step, count, listen.
    The camera’s rolling.

    In that last second before the stunt
    you wonder if your calculations were correct:
    that high window right over you
    black as leather, rectangular as a hangman’s drop
    might save your neck, or not -
    the trick is
    to step out into the abyss
    as if you could fly :

    and through I will go

    from the next world

    back into this.

In ‘Steamboat Bill Jr’, 1927, Buster Keaton stood on a precisely-calculated spot while the frontage of a house fell on him leaving him unscathed, due to the window space.

Pippa Little is Scots, born in Tanzania, raised in Scotland and now lives in Northumberland. She has received many awards and prizes and her work has appeared in Magma, Poetry Review, Orbis, and many other journals and anthologies. The Spar Box, (Vane Women 2006) was a PBS Pamphlet Choice, and her other books are Foray (Biscuit Press 2009) and The Snow Globe (Red Squirrel 2011). Overwintering will be published by Oxford Poets/Carcanet in October 2012.

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    David R Morgan : Methuselah

    Soon most die, embracing and alone – losing nothing.

    But this ancient man is tired. Those insurance men
    who sold him life with policies are long dead.
    He paid them out, he gathers interest now,
    and scrawls his memoirs in his retro Apple Mac.

    There were women. Their bones fill his grey bed.
    He thinks he has them yet, like ghosts whose breath
    is soft as his. All his snows have melted their seas
    in the same sun each year. He does not sleep.

    He learned what there was to learn, left doubts room,
    even reached this uninhabitable present:
    what were limits to him? But I'm his descendant.
    I'll pay my own way, thanks. One day I'll bury him.

    You should have expectations when you die ...

                                                            gaining everything.

David R Morgan has been an arts worker, literature officer, festival organiser and writer-in-residence for education authorities, Littlehay Prison and Fairfield Psychiatric Hospital. He has had two plays screened on ITV and his poems have been widely published. His latest collections are Beneath The Dreaming Tree (Poetry Space Ltd 2011) and Lightbulbs In The Sea (Knives, Forks & Spoons Press 2011). He has also written many books for children.

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    Murray Bodo : Hagar

    Genesis 16

    Light so dry it could kill
    Anyone who stays outside

    Light heavy as hot curses
    Nothing to do but crawl

    Into the shade and pour well-
    Water over her body

    Lift the sun’s heavy burden
    From bent scorched shoulders

    Close her eyes surrender to
    Imaginary mountains

    Heat waves are cool breezes
    The hot sand cold lake water

    And she is somewhere other
    Where an Angel speaks to her

    Sends her back to the duel
    Between Sarai and her

    And the birth of Ishmael
    Who grows up wild and cruel

    She prays to God the Other
    The one she saw seeing her

    By the fountain of water
    For her Ishmael, the other

    What will become of her son
    Will he be replaced, undone

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    Murray Bodo : Anointing Don Aldo Brunacci

    You’re sitting up waiting for
    the anointing, telling me

    War horses pound through the walls
    menacing hooves above you

    Knights rear back in their saddles
    their swords slice the stagnant air

    Some say it’s the morphine which
    can’t be true in 1209 you say

    Bocce balls bang hard outside
    hooves thrash in a mad frenzy

    You scream mutely as in dreams
    bracing yourself for the kill

    And no one hears or answers
    though the fresco teems with life

    For hours the hooves delay
    pounding your head to pieces

    You wonder why you see knights
    not Nazis and Fascists in

    Assisi in war time or
    Jews you hid from the evil

    I answer, “They’re now in your
    soul’s peace where there are no walls”

    I minister healing oil
    hooves drop, slide off your forehead

    Your eyes close, you dream good dreams

Don Aldo Brunacci, famed priest of Assisi who helped hide Jewish refugees during the second World War, died February 2, 2007. He was inducted among “The Righteous of Israel” for his heroic efforts.

Murray Bodo is a Franciscan Priest who resides in Cincinnati, Ohio. The author of 27 books, including the best selling, Francis: The Journey and the Dream, his poems, stories and articles have appeared in magazines and literary journals. His latest book of poems, Something Like Jasmine, with accompanying CD of Fr. Murray reading selected poems, was released by Tau Publishing in 2012

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    James Norcliffe : Forgiveness at Ramadan’s End

    For Nukila

    When she returns to the world
    she wishes me well and asks
    for my forgiveness, but I am
    puzzled as to what I can forgive.

    She does not offer a catalogue
    of wrongs or any one specific sin
    and I understand it is a blanket
    she wants of soft wool and ritual.

    There is a cold breeze off the river
    and a shudder in the grass that I see
    all but hides a brave grey rabbit staring
    at us, one eye bright with forgiveness.

    So I point out that the commodity
    she desires can be found there, but
    she tells me that the rabbit had eyes
    only for me and besides it has gone;

    it is my hand she needs to shake
    and when I give her what she
    wants she seems happy enough,
    though I am troubled wondering

    what it was that the rabbit knew.
    So I hurry back to the grassy bank,
    but the rabbit might never have
    been and when I turn again I find

    myself alone once more by a stone
    too cold to sit on and nothing else
    to do but return to my room
    watch candidates on television smiling

    with love, with knowledge,
    with forgiveness.

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    James Norcliffe : my alien vegetable

    my alien vegetable
    has three small buttons
    each is marked press

    my alien vegetable
    completely eschews the earth
    preferring the atmosphere
    preferring to chew doggedly
    at the very air with small cogged teeth

    there are fine capillary hairs
    caressing my alien vegetable
    they are spectral and spectrum
    they glow like ghostly rainbows

    my alien vegetable
    disdains auto-erotica
    nevertheless has
    three small buttons
    each marked bliss

    my alien vegetable has no need
    at all of a life-support system
    although it does exult
    in the flat-lining electronic
    music of the spheres

    my alien vegetable
    has three small buttons
    each is marked peace

    like the buttons marked press

    it is a small alien joke
    whereas the buttons marked bliss

    are an aptitude test
    nobody has yet passed

    my alien vegetable
    which does not suck at the sun
    follow the stars nor leave
    anything to chance

    has three small buttons
    each is marked once

my alien vegetable is a riddle poem, after the Anglo Saxon tradition. The solution can be found below the poet’s biography.

James Norcliffe is an award-winning New Zealand poet, editor and writer of fantasy novels for young people. The most recent of his six collections of poetry are Along Blueskin Road, 2005, Canterbury University Press, and Villon in Millerton, 2008, Auckland University Press. Two new collections are due in 2012: Shadow Play, a finalist for the Proverse International Writing Prize, will be published by Proverse in November, and Packing a Bag for Mars, a collection for younger readers will be published by Clerestory Press. His work has appeared in many journals including Verse, Gargoyle, Harvard Review, The Literary Review, Poetry International & The Rialto. He was a guest poet at the XX International Poetry Festival in Medellin, Colombia in 2010 and at the Trois Rivieres International Festival in Quebec in 2011. He is currently Children’s Writer in Residence at the Otago University College of Education

The correct answer to the my alien vegetable riddle is a suicide bomb.

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    Peter Branson : Farmers’ Market

    What draws them here to swarm, first Saturday
    each month, come cold or warm? Not home-spun cakes
    and ale in truth, venison pasty, cheese,
    preserves, jewellery, craft stalls, garden plants.
    Hemmed in old barns and tents like words in books,
    strong bloods and dolly birds of yesteryear
    trump card each other, grandkids, holidays,
    ‘Can’t shakes it off’s, problems with waterworks.
    It’s upstairs-Downton Abbey, therapy,
    time warped and whiled; small sheep beyond the ha
    ha, wilderness and lake snapped up, returned,
    cling-wrapped, like chestnut pate, marrow jam,
    to terrace, semi, bungalow or flat,
    lawn picture-postcard, framed with flowers to match.

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    Peter Branson : Gobby

    Tag you got lumbered with first day; real name
    I’ve no recall. You hardly ever spoke;
    gestures with single words attached made do,
    but symbols raised you up, 11plus and all.
    Bolted, thin as an unstrung bow, all eyes,
    you stooped to suit, With Tonka hands and feet,
    stilt arms and legs like loose-strung bags of  bones,
    pure pantomime, it never worked. I joined
    your scourging, swallowed pride; when things died down,
    played faithless Peter by your side,

                                                            for you,
    pie crust of permanent surprise baked on
    your doughy face, were indispensible.
    A natural, you’d spy a nesting hole
    at thirty yards. With birds, somehow you knew.
    Outside your territory you’d point which patch
    the garden warbler’s nest would be, spot where
    the barn owl should appear and she’d be there,
    pale as a ghost, gilded and quartering.
    You taught me how to crouch low down against
    the sun, spot fertile shapes in silhouette.
    Unlike most kids, you never took the eggs;
    your pockets bulged with pellets, feathers, skulls.

Peter Branson’s poetry has been widely published in journals and he has won the Grace Dieu and the Envoi International poetry competitions. His first collection, The Accidental Tourist, was published in May 2008 and his latest one has been accepted for publication by Salmon Press

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    Wendy French : Terence

    Terence wanted to be a bird
    his therapist once accused him of being a magpie.
    He wasn’t a magpie, didn’t covet anything
    that belonged to anyone else.
    Just wanted what was his. And sleep.
    He dreamed of being a kestrel, hovering.
    At school a teacher had once shouted Cuckoo,
    sent him to the back of the line.
    He vowed one day people would see
    how it was never his fault.
    Now was his chance to grow wings, a beak.
    Circle round the back of the stage.
    He’d watched the kites feeding at Tregaron,
    observed how they knew the exact moment to dive,
    swoop for their prey and then with a flourish spread wings,
    reach up extravagant against a sky.

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    Wendy French : As It Is

    She tells me that stars hiss and planets whisper,
    that's when you know where to get out.
    There won't be any darkness left and the hunter
    will guide your way. There are no white dragons
    or midnight swans and the rain will crackle
    as the taxi draws to a halt.
    Looking out
    over the cold vicarage lawn to where graveyards have held
    the dead for hundreds of years, I don't question this,
    but now, glancing back over my shoulder,
    there’s a six year-old child who had no idea
    what she was on about.

Wendy French lives in London and facilitates writing in healthcare and educational settings. She has two full collections of poetry; the latest surely you know this, was published in 2009 by tall-lighthouse press. (The title is a fragment from Sappho.) Wendy won 1st prize in the NHS section of the Hippocrates Poetry & Medicine prize in 2010 and was awarded 2nd prize in 2011. She is currently working with Jane Kirwan on a collection about the NHS.

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    Robert Nisbet : Underlings

    Sublunary (adj.): Situated beneath the moon; hence, of or pertaining to this world, terrestrial, earthly.

    The moon’s light is shed generously
    some August nights, some white quiet
    winter’s evenings. It is not much seen
    in committee rooms, reception rooms
    or engine rooms, but those underlings,
    such as walk dogs at night,
    who sometimes leave the pub a little early,
    walk round the block, look at the cast and colour
    of a back garden, its stubs and pots and stems;
    those who look sometimes from study bedrooms,
    from top floor flats, alone such evenings,
    to read or think – they,
    looking from the window, will know how
    the gardens, streets, back yards
    are stilled by the moonlight’s unreservedness,
    its grace.

Robert Nisbet lives in Haverfordwest, West Wales. He teaches English literature classes for Swansea University and creative writing classes for University of Wales Trinity Saint David, as well as being concerned with local history and sports journalism. His chapbook Merlin’s Lane appeared from Prolebooks last year.

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    Elizabeth Smither : Old lemon tree

    The lemons in shops are smooth and gleam
    as if they’ve been handed down from the moon
    a light yellow with no blemishes.

    This old tree which receives its moonlight
    sparsely through taller spreading trees
    has fruit that should hide under leaves

    old clasped hands trying to hold a ball
    and press it tight for exercise
    each year another layer of flaws

    skin so rough no one could suspect
    the strange clear sweetness within
    when halves are impaled on the lemon squeezer.

Elizabeth Smither has published 17 collections of poetry as well as novels and short stories. Her most recent publication is a writer’s journal: The commonplace book; a writer’s journey through quotations (Auckland University Press, 2011). A new collection of poems, The blue coat, will be published in early 2013.

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    Teoti Jardine : The Time Has Come

    the wind is blowing timely echoes
    gardeners try to rake them in
    the watering cans are filled with sand
    rainbows weave a blackbirds wing

    oranges ring lemons
    no bells to toll in old St Clements

    no dawn chorus greets the day
    the sun now rises in the west
    there’s puzzle in the eyes of mind
    pasts have hitched-hiked home to rest

    oranges ring lemons
    no bells to toll in old St Clements

    owls no longer screech or hoot
    nights stories left untold
    locusts line the pillows
    devouring dreams as they unfold

    oranges ring lemons
    no bells to toll in old St Clements

    rhymes have turned the other cheek
    words have joined the fray
    cliché cannot see for looking
    reason shrugs and walks away

    oranges ring lemons
    no bells to toll in old St Clements

    the buzzard tides are ebbing
    they leave no traces on the strand
    the time to come is left unsaid
    the hour glass has no sand

    oranges ring lemons
    no bells to toll in old St Clements

Teoti Jardine, was born in Queenstown New Zealand, of Maori, Irish and Scottish descent . His Maori tribal affiliations are Waitaha, Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu. He has been writing poetry off and on most of his life and has had poems published in Te Panui Runaka, the Burwood Hospital News Letter and the Christchurch Press Poetry section.

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     Amado Storni : Si Tu Estuvieras Aquí                          Amado Storni : If you were here
                                                                                              English versión by GW and MBB

    SI tu estuvieras aquí                                                           If you were here
    el mundo giraría más deprisa que mi soledad                  the spinning world would overtake my loneliness
    y el Amor no sería un pájaro sin alas                                and Love would cease to be a wingless bird
    al que tengo que enseñar a volar todos los días.             I’d have to teach to fly again each day.

    Si tu estuvieras aquí                                                           If you were here
    mis sueños que son tuyos dormirían a tu lado                  my dreams of you would sleep beside you;
    y el deseo no sería una ventana enladrillada                    desire would cease to be a bricked-up window
    con vistas a los besos que te debo.                                   overlooking kisses I still owe you.

    Mis futuros no serían pasados imperfectos                      My futures would not be unfinished pasts
    y mis labios, adúlteros de ausencias,                                and my lips, unfaithful through your absence,
    aprenderían a decir “te necesito”.                                     would learn to say “I need you”once again.

    De no haberte conocido,                                                    If I’d not met you,
    ¿qué parte de mi alma se habría quedado estéril,            how fruitless would my life have been
    estéril para siempre?                                                         how barren might my soul have stayed?

Amado Storni (a pseudonym adopted in honour of the Argentinan poet Alfonsina Storni) was born in Madrid. He has published four poetry collections, most recently Post no Passes (Net Vision Publishing, 2008). He has also won prizes for poems and short stories. For more information see http://amadostorni.blogspot.com/.

GW is a professional translator working in New York; MBB edits London Grip New Poetry

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     Angela Kirby : How It Is

     i.m. Sam Alexander MC, 1982-2011

    Trestles slid away, folded
    and put aside, candles snuffed,
    the singing stops, the music
    dies, mourners drift off
    and regroup by the gate.

    Dear God, there seems
    little now to show for it all -
    nothing but a rolled-up flag,
    a scatter of wreaths, a bugle call,
    this shock of fresh-dug earth.

Angela Kirby was born in Lancashire and now lives in London. Her poems are widely published and have won a handful of prizes. She was the BBC’s Wildlife Poet of the Year in 1996 and 2001. Her two collections, Mr Irresistible and Dirty Work, are published by Shoestring Press

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    Janet Simon : New River - Hackney

    The canal is a grey god, cut and straight,
    A fake tributary with arcades of east space
    To stroll through by concrete horizons.
    This thick viaduct is an old misnomer.
    It stops at the reservoir with boats
    Lazy over it and tea at the last café.
    Taking its path I try to remember
    What has been dismembered, the traffic
    Once flowing, warehouses and cranes.
    Blackberries sweet as the end of summer
    Still stain my fingers purple and bloody.
    New bushes invade and the stream carries flotsam
    As time hurtles past the Downs of London
    And slime covers its ersatz waters.

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***

    Janet Simon : Losing Weight

    She leaves the house with its solid stuff
    turning off her taps, feeling for keys,
    her purse, her pass, her legs, her facts
    which she knows are there, but she's still not sure
    if she'll see them again, once the door is shut.
    Just one more check to see if she's missed
    a tie that binds. A frantic pull
    at an inside pleat where a license is stored,
    one last assurance that she has substance.

    The gate is closed. The sky is up.
    The wind begins. It blows her away
    down the street. She hovers an inch or two
    over the surface of paving and leaves
    along a corridor leading her on,
    lighter, away from her things.
    A comb and mobile drop from her bag.
    Maps and money fall out of her pocket
    and what she knows she must leave behind
    rings its last alarm, a final flicker
    fluttering the heart, before it all flies
    like a swarm of swallows from England.

    Paper and plastic, leather and metal,
    memories, batteries, circuitry, chips
    dissolve into clouds that carry away
    the panic that made her clutch
    at the rubbish that weighed her down.

Janet Simon is a native Londoner. A previous runner up in the National Poetry Competition, she has two published collections; Victoria Park and Asylum.

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